Blood Reign (#4): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series) (14 page)

“Stop!” Julia shouted. Her breathing was deliberately shallow, a self-preservation tactic. The dead all around her were fresh, the blood so thick it overpowered all other senses.

Julia couldn't smell the forest, the grass, flowers... The scent of blood that saturated the air was so strong it tasted like metal vapor.

Tharell and Jason, the sounds of their fists a collision of raw meat, looked up at the sound of her yelled plea.

She drove a shaky hand through her long hair, a tangled and dirty mess. Julia repeated herself. “Stop.” Her eyes stayed on them. “They are dead, and I am tired.”

She took in the tangled fey and Were and sighed. All species’ males battled it out. No one actually resolved anything with words. Out loud.

The two stood, their bodies hopelessly covered with the remnants of the newly dead. Jason shoved Tharell.

Julia had never seen a man slap another. It rocked Jason's head back, and a low growl erupted like boiling water from his lips.

Tharell's azure eyes flashed on Jason.

Daring him—warning him.

“Look!” Cyn cried, and Julia turned. The blood of whomever her best friend kneeled beside soaked her to mid-thigh. Julia ignored the men’s posturing and ran to her.

She tripped over a severed leg, owner unknown. Her hands bit into the slick soup of death at her feet, and she jerked upright. A sob broke away from her like a chunk of her soul. Julia plowed forward, the bits pressing  between her toes, and it took all she was not to make more of a mess with the gorge that rose inside her.

She fell on the opposite side of the body from Cyn.

Marcus
. Julia covered her mouth, trying to stifle the sadness that threatened to pour out.

Then his eyes opened.

Julia gasped, landing on her butt and instantly soaking her pants. “Can you help him?”

Cyn shook her head. “I can heal, but this...”

She didn't say more.

Marcus' body did not exhibit one uncut surface. That he'd survived so long was a miracle.

“I can make him feel better...” She gave a small lift of her shoulders. Cyn's eyes conveyed their miserable situation eloquently, wide and shiny with tears none of them had time to shed.

“So we can ask questions,” Julia clarified as the others came to stand behind her.

“Yes,” Cyn confirmed.

Marcus' pain-filled eyes rolled in his head, looking between the two women.

His slight nod was the only indication he knew what their plan was.

Cyn lowered her palms to his chest.

A shuddering breath took hold of him, wracking his body. A spasm shook his torso and more blood oozed out.

“I am dying,” Marcus stated from a throat that was no longer working perfectly.

Julia ripped a tear off her cheek with a finger. It burned her skin, scorching her heart. “Yes,” she answered.

Marcus nodded. Julia grasped his hand. “I am sorry.”

“No. This is not of your doing.” He tapped Julia's lips to silence her then dropped his hand to his ruined chest.

Julia did not look down, could not.

“My children?”

Julia and Cyn's eyes met over his body.

When Julia glanced at Marcus' face, his eyes were closed.

“Scott is alive.” Julia didn't have the heart to mention the possible torture of his one living child by the Reds of Alaska.

Marcus' face hardened, becoming resolute. “Listen closely.”

The survivors moved around him in a loose circle, but his eyes remained focused only on Julia.

“It was Anthony Laurent.” He coughed, and blood-tinged phlegm landed beside him.

Cyn made a choked noise and Julia gripped his hand tighter, her throat clicking with a hard, awful swallow. “How...”

“He had a blade cleansed by the blood of the demonic.” He took a rattling breath. “It is proof against all Singer talents but a handful.”

Domi and Tharell exchange a portentous glance.

“Demonic?” Julia whispered.

“Like the fey, they are an entity we assumed did not need consideration.”

“Until now,” Cyn offered, and Marcus nodded.

“It has been a thousand years since the last appearance.” Marcus ended on a wheeze.

“Like Jules being the Rare One,” Jason said from behind him.

Marcus slid his gaze to Jason.

“Yes.”

He closed his eyes, as did Cyn. She opened her own and looked a Julia. “He doesn't have long.” To Marcus, she said, “I'm sorry.”

He covered her hand with his. “It is more than I'd hoped. To be able to speak with the queen, to transfer my knowledge to her. Preparedness is key.” He coughed and more blood fed the hungry earth beneath him.

“Hear me,” Marcus began again. “The demonic may only use those who possess the blood of Hades. They cannot influence or manipulate humanity directly. But Were, especially the Red, even without demonic blood, can be used as vessels of destruction. Tony
must
have demonic blood and a debt of that lineage has been called in.”

“Why kill the Singers?” Cyn asked.

Tharell spoke for the first time. “Where there is the blood of the demon, there is also its counterbalance; the blood of the angelic.”

“Angel's blood?” Truman asked in disbelief.

Marcus nodded. “As Singers are an offshoot of humanity, those who possess the blood of the Singers might also have that of the angelic. Being Singer does not automatically guarantee the lineage.”

“But if all Singers were dead, then there would be no angelic blood,” Julia guessed.

“Singer-cide,” Adi said from behind Cyn's shoulder and Julia nodded sadly.

“By killing the known Singers, the natural enemy and protector of all supernaturals, the potential for peace is lost forever.”

“So we're not really human?” Julia pressed and Marcus' eyes fluttered shut.

Please do not die before I have this answered
, Julia thought. Then guilt heated her face in a blush that burned along her skin. Marcus lay dying, but she wanted the answers. Even knowing how badly she needed those for a chance of resolution didn't make it any more justifiable.

“When was anyone going to tell me I was an angel?” Julia asked aloud.

Marcus' eyes snapped open. “You are not heavenly but of heaven. The blood of the angels is most strongly entrenched inside you. You are the hope of all that is good.”

“No pressure,” Truman muttered in the background.

Julia silently agreed with the sentiment.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“If I had that answer, I would have anticipated what was coming.” He breathed deeply, his face tightening in pain.

Cyn shook her head.

Marcus was fading.

“I should have married the three, for protection from this.”

“It is too late,” he said softly.

He gasped, trying to sit up. “You are the Rare One; through you, peace can be realized.”

Marcus' hands fell away from hers. “Yet not without bloodshed and death.”

His eyes glazed over, hands dropping from his chest to the blood-soaked grass on either side of his body. His palms faced toward the sky as though asking for forgiveness from an uncaring power.

Karl Truman hunkered down beside the dead leader of Region One and closed Marcus' unseeing eyes with gentle fingers.

“We might have bigger things than the Reds finding us,” he said as he stood.

Jason held his hand out to Julia, and she took it.

She couldn't baby herself any longer.

Julia gazed out over the massacre of her people. Their severed body parts littered the ground as far as the eye could see. A sea of blood buried the green of the grass in a scarlet river of decay and violence.

Heat rose from her feet, driving up her body like a flame without end.

Jason caught Julia as she wailed against his shoulder. The sound lifted the heads of wildlife caught in the melody of her sorrow. A chorus of absolution, grief, and determination buried in a song of which even the lowest of the creatures heard and took note.

A plan began in the part of her brain not consumed by sadness. It wasn't perfect—it wasn't even right.

But it was what she must do.

Julia would enlist the vampires.

The blistering shower she'd taken still warmed Julia’s skin. Running shoes firmly encased her damaged feet, scraped raw of the abuse from outside Region One.

Jason stood by her side as a first guard of sorts. The survivors were downstairs. The house escaped being a mausoleum by a millimeter. When they'd heard shouts for help, most of the Singers must have run outside and had been summarily cut down. They had found Brendan’s body in the kitchen and buried him.

“I don't understand why the sheer numbers didn't just take that prick down. Overwhelm him,” Jason said.

Julia shook her head, sad and puzzled. Though the idea had occurred to her as well. Over and over. “I don't know. There must be some magic to that sword beside demon's blood.” Just saying the name
demon
felt wrong. Filthy.

Jason blew out a ragged exhale. “We need to track Tony down and kill his ass.”

There'd been enough killing, but for Tony she'd make an exception.

*

Tharell and Domi had cast a spell like a great magnet of death.

Then they had asked Julia where she wanted the remains.

When they posed the morbid question, Julia's thoughts had turned to the lake, a beautiful spot that calmed her. She'd told them where, and they dug a horrible, necessary trench where they interred the unidentified parts. They closed the wound of the earth, every drop of blood and sign of the physical bodies collected as if summoned by an unseen force.

Tharell and Domi had cast a powerful spell of death attraction inside the mass grave, and the parts of Julia's people had responded like a summons.

She hadn't wanted to but felt she owed it to the murdered Singers. She had watched as the remains crawled and trembled along the grass as though dragged by invisible pulleys. It slid off the house and over every surface to which it clung then made its gruesome way to the resting place.

It was a vision that, when Julia was old, haunted her just as strongly as when it happened.

She continued to braid her hair, thinking about how she could bring up what she needed to do, remembering what she wanted to so badly forget.

“What, Jules?” Jason asked, taking an escaped wisp and tucking it behind her ear.

“I know how to find Tony.”

Jason sighed. “It's been one day, Jules. Lucius and Scott are still missing, the Reds unaccounted for.” He gave her a level stare. “There were ten Combatant, now there are two left, and we don't know where the hell they are.”

“Victor was never found.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Okay, GQ might still be okay. But doesn't his blood know where you are or something?”

Julia lifted the corners of her lips at Jason's utter lack of indifference about the Singers. Her smile waned at what it'd mean to bring him in as her king. He didn't seem ready.

Really, she wasn't ready, either.

Julia sighed.

Jason pulled a face. “What—Jules, you gotta know that just us
staying
alive
is the main thing here.”

“I do.”

She met his hazel eyes, filled with concern and longing. Julia knew, as sure as she stood before him, Jason wanted to go back to the way things had been. But the past was lost like sand through fingers.

He knotted his brow. “I'm sorry, all those people...”

“Singers,” Julia corrected softly.

“Yes, Jules—Singers.” Jason raked a hand through his hair. The absence of his hands on her, as well as his acceptance of their new life, left her cold. “I'm sorry Tony wasted them. But it is what it is. There's not a thing we can do to take it back. Going after Tony right now is begging for worse things to happen.”

“Maybe.” Julia lifted her chin, giving him steady eyes. “Or maybe he's going to go from one Region to the next, slaughtering whoever he can find.”

Jason folded his arms across his muscular chest. The sunlight streamed through her bedroom window, hitting his hair just right, making it appear blond when it was too sandy to qualify. She noticed it needed a trim.

She pushed distracting thoughts to the side. “I want to call vamps in.”

“What?” Jason said, his arms falling to his sides. “No fucking way.”

Julia stood up from the vanity where she'd been plaiting her hair. “I think I can make it work, with William's kiss.”

“Oh yeah,” Jason said sarcastically, “the vamps are
so
trustworthy.”

“They won't have the problem with the metal.”

They regarded at each other for a moment in mutual consideration.

“Why?” Jason asked.

Julia sucked in a breath. “Because they're dead.” Then let it out slowly.

“Ya sure?”

No, she wasn't. “I don't know. In theory, it sounds like it'd be worth a try.”

Julia leaned forward. “Don't you think it's odd that all we have left are a few Singers and Reds?”

“Reds who are up our asses,” Jason countered.

“That's true. But there's also the fey.”

Jason shook his head, refolding his arms in semi-defiance. “Nah, they're okay, but I'm not sure I'm buying what they're sellin'. Don't trust them.”

Julia laughed. “You don't trust anyone.”

“Kevin. I trusted him.”

Julia looked at Jason while they paused to remember their friend. The first casualty of many.

“Yeah,” Julia whispered as their fingers intertwined.

Jason pulled her against him. “Let me protect you, Jules. It's all I can do for now—all that I am.”

She laid her head against his chest. The ache in her soul was more than a bruise; a crushing wound of grief.

In the absence of hope, darkness bloomed like a black orchid.

Dark, final. A night without day.

*

“He has killed almost all the Singers of this Region. Therefore”—Tharell paused for effect—“I do not see any reason to hold to our bargain.”

“I still want the Rare One.”

Tharell scooped the water, spreading it again to capture the image perfectly. A ripple across the surface of the lake spun, taking the shape of a circle.

Gabriel's image sharpened, the water the mirror of their communication.

“Be that as it may, I am not the transporter of this. Now that this colony of Singers has been decimated, the demonic will move on to Region Two. The logic of evil never wavers.”

An expression of distaste spread across Gabriel's face. “Our intelligence suggests the leader of Region Two has been subdued, she is of sufficient Sidhe descent that she is no longer necessary.”

Tharell did not like Sidhe business leaving Faerie. And here were the most intimate of secrets traveling to this corrupt coven of vampires. Someone was leaking things they should not be.

They would be found, but that was for a different day.

Tharell kept his face clear of his thoughts. “That one Singer female, though she has sufficient blood quantum to breed—”

Gabriel laughed. “No.” He shook his head, golden red hair slithering over broad shoulders. “The demonic is raging across this great land, taking out any supernatural in his sights. He can heal everything but a killing blow. How long do you think it will be before he pays Faerie a visit with his special metal?”

Tharell did not respond immediately. He had said nothing when the Region One leader had spilled truths with his dying breath.

Nor was Gabriel aware that angelic blood would cure all their ills. The Singers would make the Sidhe indestructible. Perfect. That had been Queen Darcel’s hope as she died knowing her model for purity was imperfect.

“Only vampire can overwhelm the rogue werewolf.”

Tharell smirked.
Bastard
. “For a price.”

Gabriel possessed a great deal of angelic blood. He was a Rare One as Julia. Tharell would have never known it with how strongly he negotiated his evildoings.

He knew not if Jacqueline would survive what they planned.

Tharell did not know if
he
would.

It was a death sentence, for life in the world of Faerie and a debt closed.

Tharell, his heart too heavy to break, wiped the surface of the water. That smug satisfaction fixed on Gabriel's face shattered with the ripples of the lake.

*

Julia asked around, but the few Singer survivors and her group hadn't seen Tharell.

“Why do you want to talk to him?” Jason asked, kissing her knuckles to take the sting out of his question.

“I was supposed talk with the Sidhe and invite them into an alliance where we could talk about intermarrying.”

Jason gave her his full attention.

“And now everyone's dead. And I want to reach out to William's former kiss and see if they want to chase after Tony and kill him before he does in more of the Singers. So the treaty is on hold.”

“And the fey don't bargain,” Jason said slowly.

Julia shook her head. “I've read about them—myth only. But oath breakers are killed.”

Jason held her hands tighter, his eyes narrowing. “What about extenuating circumstances?”

Julia shrugged. “No such thing. We find Tharell and see what our options are. Or be held to a promise I made, not understanding all the Singers would die.”

“No all.”

Julia sighed. “No, not all.”

“You're very ruthless, Jules,” Jason said, only half-joking.

“More than I want to be.”

A small rustle in the tall grass caught their attention. A dark silhouette made slow progress from the lake. The gait and carry of the broad shoulders were unmistakable, but the bruised plum of his skin, a deep violet smear against the pressing twilight, was most distinctive.

“Speak of the devil,” Julia said.

“Yeah.” She gave Jason a sharp look.

It sounded like he meant it.